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The closer I get to purchasing a house the more I find myself pushing against measures like this. NIMBY exists to protect most people's largest financial asset.

• Cau5tik 8y ago
  That's one of the main issues here. Houses should be about having a place to live, not your largest financial asset. The selfish protectionism that comes from treating housing as an investment is why so many cities are so broken.
  • gaius 8y ago
    How is it selfish? People have got to save for retirement somehow. Company final salary pensions are a thing of the past. Investments in shares can go down as well as up. The government can’t or won’t help. What do you expect people to do? Sacrifice their own wellbeing for your unearned benefit?
    • azernik 8y ago
      > Investments in shares can go down as well as up. So instead, homeowners vote for policies that make sure that they somehow get an asset that is guaranteed to go up. That's an unearned benefit, it's one that comes at our expense, and it's an expense that they sure as hell didn't have to deal with when they were getting established in the world.
      • gaius 8y ago
        they sure as hell didn't have to deal with when they were getting established in the world No. Those people built the communities you find so desirable to live in, sometimes from scratch, sometimes by regenerating a dilapidated area. The value you crave would not even exist if not for them. And now that the hard work is done, you expect to waltz in and have it for the taking? Millennials think they are the first generation ever to live through hard times. While raking in fortunes their parents and grandparents could only dream of, working for tech unicorns.
        • cthalupa 8y ago
          >The value you crave would not even exist if not for them. And now that the hard work is done, you expect to waltz in and have it for the taking? I thought the value was due to all of the high paid tech workers coming in with high salaries and driving up housing prices?
        • chao- 8y ago
          Most Millennials do not work for tech unicorns. Most Millennials do not even live in urban centers, most are living a very conventional suburban lifestyle. Everyone else wants to think of Millennials as the first generation that is uniquely self-absorbed or whiney.
        • michaelt 8y ago
          If Google opens a campus across the road from my house, my house's value would skyrocket with no work at all from me.
        • pm90 8y ago
          > No. Those people built the communities you find so desirable to live in, sometimes from scratch, sometimes by regenerating a dilapidated area. The value you crave would not even exist if not for them. And now that the hard work is done, you expect to waltz in and have it for the taking? Good luck with your desirable community as it closes itself to everyone, grows old and turns into an old-age home /s. Just stop this characterization of all Millenials, will you? Young people are the future and they are contributing into the welfare programs that go into supporting old farts. Old farts who neglected the infrastructure, squandered billions in foreign wars and much more in toxic financial instruments and just elected the most unqualified idiot as the most powerful person in the world. See how that kind of generalization works?
        • azernik 8y ago
          Really? How many cities were founded from scratch by Boomers? I'm in California, so let's think of the places that are having serious housing crises. Oakland? San Francisco? Santa Monica? Los Angeles? Well before Boomers. The small cities that are trying to bring in businesses without building any housing? Palo Alto? Menlo Park? Berkeley? All of these places were within 25% of their current size by 1960. Boomers didn't build any of these communities from scratch; they may have grown up in them, but they're not special unique forebears that made everything around us.
      • crdoconnor 8y ago
        >So instead, homeowners vote for policies that make sure that they somehow get an asset that is guaranteed to go up. That's an unearned benefit, it's one that comes at our expense, and it's an expense that they sure as hell didn't have to deal with when they were getting established in the world. The 0.1% sure know how to get the 99% to viciously attack one other over the scraps that fall from their table. Most assets have been going up in value. It's because of wealth inequality reaching staggering levels. It isn't because of homeowner voting patterns and it isn't the fault of homeowners. They just didn't do as badly out of this problem as non-homeowners.
    • CalRobert 8y ago
      Because it imposes costs on others for your own benefit. It's rational, but it's still selfish. If you don't want me to live next door, buy the land. As it stands now you can forbid me from living on land you don't own.
      • gaius 8y ago
        I can forbid you from polluting upstream of a section of river I own (hypothetically, I don’t own any). That’s a perfectly reasonable thing to do.
        • ambicapter 8y ago
          And this is similar how?
          • gaius 8y ago
            We’ve established there are ways and reasons for people to influence what happens on nearby land they don’t own themselves. Now we are merely quibbling over the details.
            • CalRobert 8y ago
              People need homes. They don't need to pollute
              • gaius 8y ago
                But we are not just talking about “homes” but “homes in a specific neighbourhood” and you can easily say they don’t “need” to live there in particular.
    • Ensorceled 8y ago
      How is working to pass laws and polices screwing other people out of affordable home ownership not selfish?
    • deleted 8y ago
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    • api 8y ago
      Housing can go down too. It's gone up for a long time because of incredibly low interest rates, foreign buyers, etc., but there have been very long stretches of time in the past where it went down and it may easily happen again. All kinds of things could pop the bubble: rising interest rates, somewhere else for Chinese money to go, geographic diversification of hot industries, etc. These things are actually more likely to result in severe drops in price than anti-NIMBY/YIMBY efforts. Supply additions will gradually stabilize or drop prices while macroeconomic shifts can collapse them suddenly. Look at the Japanese housing market for an extreme example of what can happen. After an insane housing run-up it's been a flat or depreciating asset for decades. There are no safe single classes of asset. If you put all your money in a house you're not diversifying.
      • gaius 8y ago
        but there have been very long stretches of time in the past where it went down and it may easily happen again But that is contrary to the Millenial narrative that every previous generation had it easy! And that they are uniquely in the entire history of the world hard-done-by.
        • s73v3r_ 8y ago
          Ranting about Millennials isn't doing anything to further your point.
          • gaius 8y ago
            But that is the entire point of the article we are all commenting on, isn’t it? People are upset that they can’t move into an already-gentrified neighbourhood at pre-gentrification prices
            • pm90 8y ago
              No. They're upset because the cost of housing isn't high simply due to gentrification, but due to an artificially created shortage, which can be easily remedied if not for the stubbornness of the people who got there first.
    • maxsilver 8y ago
      > People have got to save for retirement somehow. This is true. But using housing for this is the worst possible way to achieve this. If Americans want guaranteed retirement security, the government should build them a guaranteed retirement security. Breaking all housing everywhere, all the time always, is not a sustainable or feasible way to fund retirements.
      • gaius 8y ago
        If Americans want guaranteed retirement security, the government should build them a guaranteed retirement security. In the UK its the exact opposite - the government actively plundered the private pension funds. People want something tangible.
    • minikites 8y ago
      I expect employees to unionize and bring these benefits back.
    • pnathan 8y ago
      how about taxing the increase in property values commensurate with income tax - year over year. that would properly align incentives. now it's just sitting on land and watching the dollars flow in - the definition of unearned wealth.
      • s73v3r_ 8y ago
        Problem with that is now you have people who can't afford to pay that tax, because they're the people who bought when housing was inexpensive, not because they're rich. Taxing those people out of their homes is not the answer either.
        • slavik81 8y ago
          That can be prevented by allowing those experiencing financial hardship to defer their property taxes until they sell their house.
          • deleted 8y ago
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        • amacbride 8y ago
          Exactly. This is why Proposition 13, limiting annual property tax increases, passed in California in the 70s. (It's now widely maligned by outsiders, but they're usually not interested in the history.)
  • deleted 8y ago
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  • protonfish 8y ago
    Not to mention encouraging price bubbles and predatory real estate and mortgage practices.
    • klipt 8y ago
      Yeah, by definition housing cannot be both: "a good investment" - grows faster than inflation. "affordable" - doesn't grow faster than inflation.
  • nostromo95 8y ago
    You are mixing up cause and effect wildly here. (Most) people don't pour money into houses because they consider it an investment, they consider it an investment because they've poured money into it. The fact that real estate is scarce combined with the fact that people need a place to live causes homes to be people's largest financial asset.
• conanbatt 8y ago
  > NIMBY exists to protect most people's largest financial asset. To protect some peoples most larges financial asset, at the expense of everyone else. I think as an owner the incentives are pretty clear. It is also cleary why the city indulges them: city officials live in the city and are owners, and local propositions will always have more participation of owners (concentrated interests) than renters and visitors (who might not be able to vote, dont have residency, nationality, commitment, etc). Seattle and SF are cruising on the back of tech, they are not producing benefit with their regulations. This is not up for economic debate: official econoimsts of the city of SF and the state of California have made their case already. This can only turn economical if another city provides a better incentive than these and competes away at the taxation level. The cities live on their incumbency, but they will pay a price in homelessness until another city starts taking away their business.
• deleted 8y ago
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• zkms 8y ago
  > The closer I get to purchasing a house the more I find myself pushing against measures like this. NIMBY exists to protect most people's largest financial asset. Of course it's rational to push against decreased supply of an asset when you're buying one; but that's not a sufficient argument for making that desire government policy. I'm sure that it's nice to have convinced the state from preventing other people from building dense/tall housing on their own property, since it makes your asset more valuable than it'd otherwise be, but the effects of that policy on non-homeowners are absolutely horrendous. The consequences of limited housing supply/density in US cities have been pretty nasty, between shitty dysfunctional transit systems, pathologically high rents (a complete apartment is cheaper in Tokyo than the cheapest form of housing in this city, namely a room in someone else's house), and a ghastly homelessness crisis. Your overinvestment into certain asset classes doesn't mean the rest of us should suffer the consequences of artificially limited supply in that asset. Other countries manage to have better cities (with cheaper rents!) than US without NIMBY-enabling zoning laws, so it's not like this sort of land-use law is inherently necessary.
• pascalxus 8y ago
  In the very long term, housing should be a 0% return relative to inflation because incomes pay for houses. And if incomes aren't increasing above inflation, in the longer term houses won't continue appreciate above inflation. Here in CA we're in a 50 year macro bubble since the 60s where housing has increased above inflation and even above salaries, but once your paying 60% of your salary to housing, it's harder and harder for it go any higher. And if society is actually progressing, it would be a bit less than 0%. Anything greater than 0% return is a bubble/ not sustainable increase - though there's nothing that says the bubble has to ever pop, but there are limits to how much it can go up.